>>>>> "Alan" == Alan Roth <alan42 at mindspring.com> writes:
Alan> Am I being accused of laziness, or of just not needing pi to
Alan> 200 places?
Well? That's not a guilt. However, the secret behind it is: if you
try, you can do it!
Alan> I find rote memorization useless for most of what I have
Alan> done professionally (as a computer programmer). If I were a
Alan> Shakespearean actor I would memorize plays--I am not one.
As a programmer, you've already memorized many things. You're just
not aware of it. Whatever language you're programming (C? C++? Java?
Perl? AWK? Lisp? Scheme? Prolog? Assembly? Basic? Pascal?), you need
to memorize its grammatical rules as well as vocabulary (i.e. reserved
words or key words). Even the simpliest general purpose computer
language have dozens of grammatical rules and dozens of reserved
words/symbols. Moreover, solely the grammar is not sufficient. You
still need to memorize the semantics of a large amount of API/system
library calls. As a professional programmer, you should be able to
recall no less than 100 such API functions without going back to the
manuals, can't you?
Alan> So what is the point? I still find it
Alan> surprising (and admirable) that someone would take on the
Alan> task of memorizing pi, but I am not inclined to do it
Alan> myself.
There are at least a few guys who claim that they have recited pi up
to 1000+ decimal places. Quite many people have memorized pi up to
100+ decimal places. I don't think this has any practical use. It's
just personal interest.
Alan> Is this a character flaw?
I don't think so. You don't have to do everything that you're capable
of. However, failing to notice your abilities and potentials is
certainly a weakness.
--
Lee Sau Dan $(0,X)wAV(B(Big5) ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ)
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